Three Years Later, He Came Back Begging novel Chapter 46

The more Bonnie thought about it, the more she realized the baby must have been conceived that night on the ski trip. While she was out there, wandering the empty streets alone, Lawrence and Hannah were in a hotel together, lost in each other.

Right after the breakup, Bonnie couldn't stop blaming herself. Maybe if she hadn’t gone looking for a coach, Lawrence wouldn’t have gotten so mad. Maybe they wouldn’t have fought at all.

If only she’d known how to ski. Maybe then Lawrence wouldn’t have taken her to that beginners' resort. Maybe Hannah wouldn’t have tagged along to “learn.” Maybe... so many maybes.

For a long time, Bonnie lived in that spiral of regret. She turned it all over and over in her mind, hating her own stubbornness, her sharp tongue, her pride. Sometimes she wondered if Lawrence had been right about her, when he said she was like some hard, useless stone — tough on the outside, impossible to warm up to. Maybe he really did get sick of her, so sick that he couldn’t even fake caring anymore. Maybe he’d just been waiting for a reason to run back to someone softer, sweeter, easier to love.

After a while, it got so she couldn’t shut it out. Every time she closed her eyes, she was right back on that mountain, in the middle of that fight.

She remembered snapping, “Lawrence, can you just keep your distance from your so-called sister for once?”

She could still see his eyes, that flicker of annoyance. He told her he’d explained a hundred times, and wondered why she couldn’t just trust him. Bonnie didn’t believe him. She said they should break up.

She remembered the look he gave her at the end — disappointed, tired, and then he said, “Bonnie, don’t come to regret this.”

She never told anyone, not even her closest friends, but she did regret it. She regretted every careless word, all the stupid pride. She even hated herself, sometimes, for not knowing how to ski.

After that, she threw herself into learning. Every bit of free time, she went skiing, whether it was at the indoor park downtown or on some snowy mountain halfway across the country. She hit every major resort. By New Year’s, while everyone else was home with their families, raising glasses under glowing lights, Bonnie was alone on an empty slope up north, first in line for the lift, first tracks on untouched snow.

She got good, too. Advanced runs, backcountry trails, whatever — she could carve clean lines with the best of them. Every new skill felt like erasing a little bit of the past, like maybe if she could just fix this one thing, she’d stop blaming herself.

But just when she finally started to let go, just as the clouds in her heart began to clear, Lawrence came barging back into her life, stirring everything up again.

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